One of the weirdest experiences I had at my last job was talking to a pair of my students who said they loved Star Trek. When I said “Klingon,” they just looked at me funny. Completely confused. They’d only seen the reboot film and literally had no idea what a Klingon even was. My knee jerk response was to be absolutely incredulous, and then, wait, no. This was a matter of more than just cultural literacy.

Brand new fans are the best ever because you get to flail at them about things you’ve known for ages and your enthusiasm doesn’t even look stupid. To them, it’s completely new and an utter revelation.

Brand new fans are the best ever because you get to flail at them about things you’ve known for ages and your enthusiasm doesn’t even look stupid. To them, it’s completely new and an utter revelation.

We were all new fans once. I know it’s painful when a fellow fan doesn’t know where Gallifrey is or how to pronounce Les Miserables but we all had to learn that at some point too, we weren’t born with it implanted in our heads. And this is a great way to look at it – use it as a chance to tell someone everything you know and show off a little.

As a brand new fan to about a million things since joining tumblr, this makes me very happy.

Also, there’s different kinds of fandom. Just because you’re not on Tumblr finding every detail about a show, a film or a book, doesn’t make you less of a fan.

I love several things that I don’t know every last quote from, but I love it because I enjoy watching/reading it and will probably never get bored of it.

I don’t need to cosplay and I don’t need to make fanart and I don’t need to ship things and I don’t need to know where Gallifrey is. Because it’s about how I perceive the subject of my fandom and that’s not anyone’s to judge.